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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25710 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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The latter class votes Republican because they hate the former class and want them thrown off Medicaid. This isn't poor people voting to throw themselves off Medicaid, it's contractors voting to throw addicts off of welfare.

This is also Republicans possibly losing their rural hospital

From the article again

During a June 19 special meeting of the Mitchell County Board of Commissioners, Jeff Harding, chair of the all-Republican board, said the hospital’s closure “could be devastating to our small community” and urged residents to contact their elected officials.

This is an all-republican board concerned about the impact.

Unless the good hard working rural Republicans are superhumans who don't need a hospital and anyone who is concerned is just a RINO, it's going to hurt them too because the economics of rural healthcare is already tight.

Actually, many rural republicans I know do self identify as people who don't need to or just don't go to a doctor. But that's more a matter of stupidity in those cases.

At no point am I arguing that rural healthcare won't be harmed, I'm arguing that they don't think it will be.

Yeah, a lot of these people think doctors are for 1) childrens and maternal care 2) emergency medicine and 3) really serious illnesses like cancer. Normal adults go to chiropractors, nutritionists, etc.

What are all you guys going to nutritionists and chiropractors and so forth for? Doesnt all that stuff just happen automatically if you eat right and exercise?

I can see a reason to go get cancer, heart, etc, screenings starting at a certain age, but I actually am quite confused why a healthy lifestyle 20-50 year old needs doctors at all beyond screenings and acute things.

How old are you? I would say things generally start going wrong at about 30 - I got a gastric problem from a not-great diet that had been fine up until then plus some heart stuff, my friend did something permanent to his ankle skiing, somebody else started getting serious insomnia, etc.

Early 40s. The skiing injury/insomnia/gastric/heart items are all things that I would put in an acute, or at least "actual malady", category. Your friend's lingering ankle injury is probably more like a chronic condition than acute if we are being really choosy on our diction, but it is nonetheless something being clearly wrong, not the maintenance/preventative work that a nutritionist would generally be for someone without a physiological nutrition/diet problem. I am still missing the purpose of chiropractors, nutritionists, etc, for "normal adults".

Because few Americans lead healthy lifestyles.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ERNAqqNSId0?feature=shared

This matches my experience (growing up in a rural deep red area) of medicine. You go to the doctor for broken bones, bleeding you can't stop, or when you're in enough pain your wife makes you go.

This is also Republicans possibly losing their rural hospital

At least here in the Appalachians, those rural hospitals have been closing down since at least 2010 and nobody other than the local residents has given a shit.

Could you explain how this is different and why I should be more concerned? Or, for that matter, why people who aren't from here and didn't care then should care now?

and nobody other than the local residents has given a shit.

That's not true at all, there's programs like the rural health fund and the the start of rural emergency hospitals program in 2023 and stuff like that being created to help keep them open and functioning.

Rural healthcare struggles to break even yet alone turn a profit, even more would be shutting down if it wasn't for Medicaid/Medicare and programs like that.

And there's extra benefits even within these programs like how sole community hospitals get higher rates

Sole community hospitals (SCHs) are hospitals that are the only source of short-term, acute inpatient care in a region. Medicare reimburses some SCHs at higher rates than they would have received under IPPS, including based on historical costs. Since 2006, CMS has also increased OPPS rates for rural SCHs. SCHs receive $0.8 billion in higher payments annually (including low-volume adjustments to SCHs) according to a 2022 MedPAC report.

It's arguably not enough, but it's definitely helping rural healthcare stay afloat when they're literally just given more money.

Could you explain how this is different and why I should be more concerned?

It's not different, we are doing stuff to try to help our rural hospitals already and we should keep doing that stuff and help more.

Or, for that matter, why people who aren't from here and didn't care then should care now?

Rural communities and urban communities depend on each other. Urban zones might be the main money areas but they need things from the rural areas still like food or that high quality quartz.

Also ya know, empathy, religious duty, etc other general reasons to help out others in need.

Also keep in mind these cuts aren't impacting just the rural areas anyway. Less funds for mental institutions and the like will have an impact on the urban areas.

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